Against All Odds
by modernlifehistorian
Summary: For all the bad habits Wyatt has picked up over the years, he has never been a good gambler.
1. Bet

New story when I should really be working on other ones! This fic is based on the song Against All Odds (Listen to the Darren Criss Version). There aren't any spoilers for the finale. It's just a story idea that came to me that I wanted to get out BEFORE the finale. Enjoy :)))

For all the bad habits Wyatt has picked up over the years, he has never been a good gambler. Always risking too much when he knows his hand is crap and feeling the negative effects as his pot would empty soon after. He should have learned by now, but instead he takes a deep breath and makes the biggest gamble of his life.

"Lucy, I love you." They're in the midst of a battle for their lives, behind a brick barrier, under the fire of easily two dozen Rittenhouse agents, and he decides now is the best time to make that confession. It had been an ambush. They had figured it was just a standard mission when they saw the mothership jumped to March 7, 1877. End of Reconstruction, Lucy had said. Maybe they are trying to stop it. But they had barely made it into the closest town before they came under fire, and now here they were. Outgunned. Outmanned. "In case we don't make it out of here. I need you to know that." She looks now like she did back what feels like a lifetime ago at the Alamo, her hair which had been in an elaborate updo was now disheveled, falling out of place, her face was matted with dirt, tears brimming in her cognac eyes, and absolutely the most beautiful he has ever seen her.

"Wyatt," she whispers, dropping her eyes as a tear falls. "Not now. I can't…" Before she can finish, he and Flynn jump up from behind the barricade to fire few more shots. She hears a man's scream and a consecutive thud. Another one down.

"How many more are there?" Rufus whispers urgently as the two soldiers come back down.

"Only a couple besides Keynes, Emma, and Carol," Flynn gruffs as he reloads. "Think we can finish them, Logan?" The two men meet eyes and share an understanding nod.

"Let's finish this." They maintain eye contact for a moment more, synchronizing their plan of attack. In another life they could have made great brothers in combat, today is proof of that. They stand from behind the barrier and make their way into the open.

Lucy and Rufus find their way together, holding onto each other as the gun shot's continue to ring.

"We're gonna make it out of this," Rufus keeps muttering, and Lucy wonders if this is the time it might not be true. She trusts Wyatt with her life, and she's reached a place where she trusts Flynn near that much, but they're been lucky so many times. How much longer will luck hold out? They're both pulled out of their trance by a yell from an all too familiar voice.

 _Wyatt._

She and Rufus forget the dangers and shoot up from behind the wall although by the looks of it there isn't much danger left. The only people moving besides Flynn and Wyatt seem to be the heart, lungs, and brain of Rittenhouse. Emma and Keynes are behind a rack of barrels, with Carol crouched beside them. She was never a fan of guns. Wyatt has visible amounts of blood seeping from his left leg but is still standing and firing beside Flynn who has his fair share of blood staining around a large graze on his shoulder. Keynes makes a bold move away from the barrels before darting down an alley.

"Get Keynes, Flynn!" Wyatt shouts. "I'll take care of Emma." The former terrorist nods and takes off after the Rittenhouse mastermind, leaving Wyatt alone to finish off the ginger heartbeat of the organization.

"You have no idea how long I've been waiting for this, Master Sergeant," Emma sneers, stalking out from behind her cover.

"I'm guessing about as long as I have," he smirks. They're gun to gun now. Whoever gets the better shot will be the victor. "Lucy, Rufus, I know you're both thinking of being a hero," he calls to them. "But you stay back." Before they have a chance to disobey his order, shots go off. Both of them go down.

"Wyatt!" They call out in unison, neglecting any possible danger that could remain and run to his side. He's still conscious when they kneel beside him. He grunts to acknowledge their presence but can't do much more. The shot got him in the lower side of his rib cage; he can feel it. He's just praying it's not as bad as it feels but still manages to lift his head to see if he hit Emma.

"Guys." Is all he can manage to gasp. "Emma." The ginger, despite an obvious wound to her collarbone is scrambling to her feet, gun in hand. Both Lucy and Rufus turn, ready to guard their soldier, but someone jumps out first.

"No, Emma," Carol snaps, throwing herself in the middle. "This needs to be over. We have nothing, no one else left. Rittenhouse is done."

"Carol, how can you say that? We can rebuild. Start fresh. This is never done," Emma says, more desperately than they've ever heard. Wyatt feels the cool metal of his gun beneath his finger tips. He grabs hold of it.

"Is it worth it? Is it worth all the lives we've taken?" Carol asks, and to their surprise Emma seems to be affected by the words and begins to lower the gun, but then she hesitates.

"I'm sorry, Carol." Emma lifts the gun and shoots, piercing her straight through the chest. The adrenaline pulsing through his blood allows Wyatt to quickly aim and fire, catching Emma in the head.

"Mom," Lucy whispers, and the sound breaks Wyatt's heart. She hasn't moved from his side, but from the looks of it she might not be able to move at all. Her eyes are locked on the body of her mother and there are silent tears falling from her eyes. He wants to reach out, comfort her, hold her, but he can still feel the blood escaping his body and his consciousness along with hit. He wants to hold out. They need him. Lucy needs him. Dammit, Logan, hang in—


	2. Call

Thank you for your positive response of the first chapter! Please enjoy and leave a review if you feel so inclined! (They make me really happy :))

 _How can you just walk away from me  
When all I can do is watch you leave?  
'Cause we've shared the laughter and the pain  
And even shared the tears  
You're the only one who really knew me at all_

* * *

He wakes up… in a hospital? A real hospital? He glances around and sure enough that's exactly where he is. Annoyingly loud machines, hovering nurses and doctors, tubes where they shouldn't be, and Lucy Preston curled up in a chair in the corner, snoring ever so slightly. He tries to call out to her but his throat feels like sandpaper rubbing against gravel.

"You're awake," a beaming Rufus greets as walks into the small hospital room with coffee in hand. "Was starting to worry we'd lost you for good." Wyatt casts a a playful glare his way before managing to croak out. "Water, man."

"Oh duh," the pilot laughs, running out the room for a brief moment before returning with a bottle of water. It burns going down his throat, but it's not an unfamiliar feeling. "How you feeling?"

"Like I was shot," he chuckles before bringing the bottle back to his lips. "Twice." Rufus laughs along with him before gesturing over to Lucy. "You've been out two days and she has not left once. When Homeland Security came and told her she needed to be debriefed about the whole mission, she told them no. Told freaking Homeland Security that they could debrief her here or not at all, and that's exactly what they did. Begrudgingly, sure, but Denise pulled rank." His heart warms at the thought. _That's my girl._ He looks over at her again. She really was everything.

Then he remembers.

"Carol?" He asks. Rufus grimaces and shakes his head. "But if it makes you feel any better, you got Emma and Flynn got Keynes. It wasn't exactly a picture perfect end, but it's over." Wyatt just nods solemnly, casting his gaze back over to the professor sleeping in the chair. She isn't without some bruises and scrapes herself, but thankfully it doesn't seem to be much beyond that.

"I'd be careful with her when she wakes up, Wyatt," he advises. "She's been through hell. I know you have a lot to say to her, but between Jessica, and Carol, and the loss of hope of getting Amy back, and you…" he just shakes his head. "You know her better than I do, but just be careful." Does he know her better anymore? After the forced distance they placed between each other, Wyatt wonders if he knows this Lucy at all. The Lucy who is so scarred from the battle she never wanted to be a part of in the first place. The Lucy who had her heartbroken again and again by her mother and a certain idiot soldier. He closes his eyes tightly, trying to hold the guilt at bay. It won't do them any good, but regardless Wyatt takes Rufus' words to heart. He knows he and Lucy are walking a thin line anyway, but with the loss of her mother, he doesn't know how much more she can take.

"I will, man. And… thank you for watching out for her." Rufus just nods before walking over to Lucy.

"Hey, he's awake," Rufus whispers, gently nudging her shoulders. She bolts up right in the chair. "It's okay, it's okay!" He grabs her arms to settle her. "You just asked me to wake you up when Wyatt did, so…" he gestures over to where Wyatt is sitting up in his hospital bed. "Now that my part of the job is finished I'm gonna go…umm... check on Flynn." He seems shocked to be even saying it, but nevertheless bows out of the room, leaving Lucy and Wyatt alone. The monitor gives away the increasing tempo of his heart.

"How ya feeling?" She asks awkwardly, knowing there's a lot more that has to be discussed.

"About as good as can be expected," he shrugs. "Ready to get out of here more than anything."

"You've been awake for all of 5 minutes and you're already ready to get out of here?" She asks quizzically, scooting her chair closer to the bed.

"Hospitals are not exactly my favorite place to be, Luce." He sees her visibly tense at the nickname, and he should have known better than to use it. Nothing else could remind them of that night anymore than the seemingly innocent nickname. It had left his lips so many times that night in 1941, and hasn't been spoke since. The invisible wall they were holding between them shatters. Time to put cards on the table.

"Wyatt—"

"Lucy, please, can I explain?" As if there is a way he could explain away all the hurt, the heartache that he had caused, but she sits back and nods her head.

"I know that there are no words I can say now to take away all that I did. I see now how blind I was to so many things, and I'm not going to try and excuse any of it. All I can ask for now is forgiveness, a second chance, a fresh start to be what we used to be. Please, Lucy, can you forgive me? Can we try again?" Her eyes shut tight and she bows her head.

"Did you mean what you said… back in 1877?" She breathes. "Was it real?"

"Lucy, with the life we've been living the past 4 years, I've lost all grips on what's real… except for that. You're the most real thing that's ever been in my life, so yes I meant exactly what I said," he confesses, reaching out to brush a strand of hair behind her ear before running his fingers across her porcelain cheek. She leans into his touch but quickly flinches away. She seems at a loss, like she's warring with herself, and he so badly wish she would allow him to battle alongside her.

"Wyatt…" she whispers. "I—I need…" she takes a deep breath. "I need time."

"Because of…" he swallows hard. "Jessica or…?"

"Yeah that has a lot to do with it, but it's everything really. My mom, Jessica, Amy, you, Rittenhouse, it was all just so much. I think I need some time to just… adjust to a life beyond all that, and I think you do as well. I'm not the only one who suffered, and it wouldn't be good for either of us to try and start something when neither of us are even remotely healed." He wants to argue, tell her that she's his best medicine, that she is the only reason he healed the first time, but this is his fault, his doing. She stepped back for him to pursue his marriage, no matter how much of a sham it turned out to be, and now it's his turn to step back for her, to give her the time she needs to do whatever it is she needs to do.

"Take all the time you need, Lucy." He tentatively takes her hand, breathing a sigh of relief when she doesn't pull away. "I'll be here. I mean," he adds playfully. "Not in a hospital hopefully, but… you get the idea." That earns him a brief chuckle followed by one of her knowing smirks, but it drops almost as quickly as it appeared.

"I can't promise anything," she warns, not meeting his eyes. "And I wouldn't want you to put your life on hold for me, Wyatt. That's not fair to you." Again he wants to argue and tell her that he will put his life on hold and wait for her until his last day. How could a man fall for anyone else when he's had the best? What other woman could compare to Lucy Preston? But he doesn't say it. That's too much pressure on her. For the first time in four years she no longer has the weight of the world pressing down on her, and he intends to keep it that way. So he channels all his heartache into one question, makes his bet, a smaller one than he would like, and shows his hand:

"Are we still… Lucy and Wyatt?" He hopes she understands. Are they still the duo from before 1941? Before Logan and Preston. Best friends, partners, two people who understood each other in ways no one else would understand. Everything they shared, the ups and downs, they built something that no one else would be able to emulate. He can't lose that. If he can keep his best friend, he knows they'll be okay. She squeezes his hand.

"I don't think I could have it any other way," she smiles, but her eyes are brimmed with tears. Before he has a chance to get another word out, a flood of nurses and doctors come in, shocking them out of their bubble, followed by a couple of suits who Wyatt assumes are Homeland Security. "I should go," Lucy whispers. "I'll see you later, okay?" And again before he can say anything, she's walking out of the room, leaving him with a gaping expression. He wins this bet, so he doesn't understand why he still feels so empty.

* * *

 _So take a look at me now  
Well there's just an empty space  
And there's nothing left here to remind me  
Just the memory of your face_


	3. Tell

Again thank you for the support! Special shout out to my goats and pandas! This chapter has a lot of poker lingo, but if it's foreign to you don't worry! Here's a quick break down:  
-a tell is the subconscious sign a person makes usually when they're bluffing  
-to call means you're matching the previous players bet  
-to raise means you're raising the bet  
-to fold means you're tapping out of that hand  
-The flop are the cards in the middle of the table any player can play off of  
If you have any other questions leave them in comments! Or just comment :)  
Enjoy!

* * *

 _How can I just let you walk away  
Just let you leave without a trace?  
When I stand here taking every breath with you, ooh ooh  
You're the only one who really knew me at all_

* * *

He's discharged from the hospital after a day of observation and given an insane amount of pain meds that he tosses in the trash as soon as he makes is back home (they make him feel funny, and Advil has yet to fail him). He scoffs as he enters the front door.

 _Home._

This isn't a home.

Home was a half-a-century old missile bunker. Home was were there was one bathroom with a broken lock. Home was were he slept on a twin cot with a roommate like he was a damn college kid. Home was were he woke up to walk out and see his family: a former billionaire, a homeland security agent, an ex-terrorist, a psychic techie, a pilot, and his historian every morning (even while Jessica was in the bunker he managed to keep the two parts of his life in separate boxes, and now after all he discovered, he's glad he did). That would never be the case again. He hopes in the deepest parts of his heart that there may come day that he wakes up to Lucy like he did for that one morning in 1941, but even that seems against odds.

So he assumes he'll settle for this right now.

A lot of people would like to think of it as modest living, but he sees it for what it is. It's a damn box of an apartment he hasn't seen in almost a year. He had thought is was kind of Denise to ensure they all had homes to go back to after… after everything. Well… he and Jiya at least. Rufus and Denise had families waiting for them. Mason had managed to keep his high class living amenities, and Denise had helped find new living arrangements for Lucy. But now he wishes he could have had a do over as well. Everything has a layer of dust covering it, cobwebs in every corner; he shudders at the thought. He's never been a fan of spiders.

He drops his bag on the ground at his feet and just plops down on the couch, coughing when a cloud of dust puffs up around him. Fan-fucking-tastic. A new couch is probably going to be a good investment. He leans forward to grab the TV remote, but when he attempts to turn the screen on, there is no response. He adds a new remote to the list. Or at least a new batteries.

Writing all this down might be a good idea.

He stands from the couch and presses the power button on the TV, needing some noise to drown out the thoughts that haunt him, but, like everything else, he's greeted with disappointment. A blank screen with a taunting NO SIGNAL stares back at him. It makes sense. Denise might have managed to keep their apartments but he wouldn't have wanted her to go as far as to pay the cable bill. Maybe he'll luck out and there will be some beer in the fridge. He would would worry about rotting food if he had ever kept much food in the fridge to worry about. If he bought food, it was typically frozen, and he was never one to let leftovers, whether it be take out or homemade, go to waste.

Sure enough, five of a six pack of Shiner had sat patiently waiting for his return. Maybe he should be concerned at the oddly long shelf life of bottled beer, but after all he's been through he actually can't think of anything he cares about less. But as he's about to open his first bottle, he hesitates.

If he drinks this first one, when will he stop? He knows this Jessica had filled his head with lies, but that was one thing that rang true in her words.

 _You're drunk five nights a week_ _._

Memories of his drunk father flash through his head, and before he can register what he's doing, the bottle's contents are emptied down the drain. He's not dumb enough to think he's going to stop enjoying the casual act of drinking, but right now, in this state, alone, drinking will not lead him down a path that brings him back to the life he wants. He imagines what Lucy would think if he began drinking himself down a hole. No, he has to be better than a man who hides his pain in a bottle if he wants to earn her trust, her love, back. It takes less than 2 minutes and the other four beers have followed the path of the first.

After the bottles have been tossed into a fresh trash bag he walks down the hall to his room. Same room, just more dust. He wants to get under the sheets and sleep for a week, but they'll need a good washing before they're ready for that, so he just shrugs off his jacket and lays atop all the covers, allowing his eyes to fall shut.

Yet it's only second before his eyes shoot back open at the feel of something on his arm. Sure enough a little eight legged demon is making its merry way across his forearm, and his reflexes see the menace squished before he can think twice. His head flops onto one of the pillows and a sigh escapes his lips.

He really should just get a new apartment.

* * *

Friday poker night at Denise's house becomes a regular thing soon after the mission ended. Michelle always cooks them a fantastic dinner, and they all take the opportunities to unwind from their weeks in the way they all prefer: together. Mason has been in the midst of high level negotiations with NASA and Lockmen with Rufus and Jiya still working for him. Denise had received the promotions she deserved from Homeland Security, now overseeing all operations on the West Coast. He's been back at Pendleton doing all he can do while waiting for his next assignment which mostly consists of training regimen for his physical aptitude as well as his shooting and a bunch of other tedious shit. It's been 3 months since their mission ended, and Wyatt already feels the itch to be anywhere other than his new apartment (it took him all of three weeks to be moved out of the first. Beyond the dust and the spiders, he really just needed a fresh start). But at the same time there is someone keeping him from seeking out any available mission.

Lucy was about to resume her old post at Stanford for the spring semester, but he heard from Rufus that she was beginning to seek out other opportunities. Opportunities that were not in Palo Alto, California, and the thought makes him sick to his stomach, but he still keeps his distance. She made her stance clear in that hospital room. Any progress will have to be on her terms. So he does his waiting.

"Hey there, Logan," Rufus nudges him. "Your turn." Wyatt realizes how lost in thought he was.

"Sorry, guys," he chuckles, glancing down at his hole cards. A Queen of Diamonds and 9 of Spades. He grazes his eyes over the the flop. 3 of Clubs, 7 of Hearts, and Queen of Diamonds. Not enough reason to fold. He's still got time. "Call," he sighs, pushing three green chips in the pot. The round continues, and he does what he does best, analyzing his friends for their tells. Beside him is Rufus who, when he's bluffing, says 'call' in a slightly higher pitch than when he's shooting straight. Jiya yawns. Mason wiggles his nose, Denise he has yet to determine a tell. She seems just as stoic when she's bluffing as when she's got a Royal Flush from the first flop. Then there's Lucy. She folds the most out of any of them, not one to take the bigger risk, but she occasionally will. And everyone at the table thinks they know her tell. They think it's the most obvious; she bites her lip. But Wyatt, he knows her a little better than the others. It's in her fingers. When she's bluffing, she taps her pinky finger. 3 quick taps, 3 long taps, 3 quick taps. He almost burst out laughing the first time he realized what it was. She was actually tapping out SOS in Morse code when she bluffed. She hates lying, so much so that when she tries here she sends out a silent plea, and it's just another one of those things he adores about her.

Denise lays out the Turn card. 4 of Clubs. He takes a deep breath as he considers his options. He has a pair. He can check, and let Rufus make the first bet, he can fold, or he can make his bet and hope another pair will come from the River.

What the hell?

"100," he sighs, pushing a black chip into the middle and hoping it'll weed out the bluffers.

Rufus folds, Jiya calls, Mason folds, Lucy raises. They meet eyes across the table, and he catches a mischievous gleam in her eye. He eyes her suspiciously and she just shrugs with a grin and looks back down at her hand. Another deep breath is required after that. They've begun rebuilding everything, and he's hoping it's pushing them in the right direction, but it's looks like that that steal his breath and fills his lungs with a hope he hasn't felt since Hollywood.

 _Maybe tonight_ _,_ he always thinks after moments like that, yet nothing has come from it.

Maybe tonight.

Another round goes. Denise lays out the final card.

7 of Spades.

He has two pair. He can take this, but it's a low hand still. He doesn't have a whole lot to lose.

"Last bet," he states. "200."

Two black chips find their way to the middle. Jiya calls, placing her chips out. Wyatt keeps a steady gaze on Lucy. Her pinky begins a subtle rhythm. She folds. Time to put cards on the table.

Jiya throws down her 4 and 5, making a flush and beating out his two pairs. They all share a laugh as Jiya gleefully pulls her winnings into her pot, and he joins in their laughter. He feels so much lighter with this group of people, and he can't imagine a life without any of them. Even the weeks when Flynn finds his way into Denise's home for a round of poker, he can't but think about how lucky he was to receive the mission that brought them together all those years ago. Or maybe it wasn't luck, maybe it was the Rittenhouse connection he never knew he had until it was too late, but regardless he's grateful. In some twisted way he guesses he does owe this all to a terrorist and the secret society they helped bring down. It brought him a family. It brought him his best friends. It brought him to Lucy. He would go through that hell again and again so long as this is where he ends up.

They go through another three hands before Wyatt's reckless betting finds him with an empty pot, so he excuses himself from the table, walking into the kitchen to refill his drink where he finds Michelle cleaning dishes from their dinner.

"Care for an extra set of hands, ma'am?" he asks.

"That's nice of you, Master Sergeant, but you go have fun," she smiles, gesturing to the sound of laughter from the dining room. "I can take care of this."

"Eh, I had an empty pot anyway," he insists. "And you made dinner, so the least I can do is wash some dishes." She laughs before shrugging and handing him the wash cloth.

"I guess I won't refuse the help," she laughs. "If you have questions about where anything goes, just ask." He nods and quickly pushes the sleeves of his navy long sleeve shirt up his forearms before dipping his hands into the scalding, soapy water. The feeling brings him back to a creaky trailer house in Snyder, Texas where his 12 year old self would lovingly yet begrudgingly help Grandma Bess with the dishes while all his cousins went out and shot cans off the fence with Grandpa Sherwin. He misses them with his whole heart, but he likes to think they'd love this eclectic family he's found just as much as he does.

"Need a hand there, soldier?" He jumps at the sound of Lucy's voice beside him. She casts a glance at the dishes in his hand.

"Oh, um," he stumbles for words. "Yeah, uh… I wash, you dry?" She nods and pulls a dry towel from the oven handle, getting to work beside him. They work in silence for a bit, and he wonders if he has the same effect she has on him. He feels nerves he hasn't felt in years, but he'll be damned if he calls them butterflies.

"You excited to be back at Stanford?" He asks, hoping to bring back some more normality between them.

"Eh," she laughs. "It feels tainted now, and pretty boring, if I'm being honest. I mean my mom got me that job in the first place, and she—well really I'm thinking about looking at other universities after this semester…" she begins to fade off by the end of the statement.

"Yeah, Rufus told me," he tells her, handing a freshly washed plate her way. "Outside of California."

"Wyatt, I know I should explain—"

"No, Lucy, you don't have to," he cuts her off because she doesn't deserve any guilt she would place on herself. He pushes pause on the dishwashing to look her directly in the eyes. He can't remember the last time they did that. "If finding a fresh start is what you need, then do it. If moving as far from California as you can is how you are going to change the world then do it." The looks she gives him is full of everything he wishes she would just say, but instead she keeps it too simple, too casual.

"Thank you, Wyatt," she smiles softly.

"Sure thing," he replies, and they both wait for the next word, but he can't bring himself to say it. It's too heavy with the past. With waiting rooms, and Germany, and drowning cars, and broken men going to save their past dead wives, and aching hearts, all wanting for something.

They both turn back to dishes and continue in silence, the laughing from the next room the only noise keeping them from shattering.

"How are things at Pendleton?" She asks after a few minutes, placing some plates in the cabinet.

"Nothing too exciting," he admits. Time between missions for most of us isn't exactly what we look forward too." _Especially for those of us without someone to come home too._ "Mostly just day to day training stuff to get us ready for when we have to leave again." She doesn't look at him when she asks her next question.

"Are you looking forward to… getting back out there? Out… wherever they send you next?" He doesn't want to read too far into her question, but it almost feels like she's reaching out to him.

"Just ready for the monotony to be over," he shrugs. "Train, go home, sleep, repeat. The same routine between every deployment, and then every deployment and honestly, Lucy, it sucks. As nasty as all the Rittenhouse business was at least it gave me a bigger purpose again, at least it was more than six months in some desert country, and now that's all I have to go back to. No time travel, no secret government to take down, no—" _No you._ He swallows hard. "So yeah it'll be better than what I have now, but it won't ever be the same." He sees her tense ever so slightly, and he feels like a dick. That was probably the last thing she needed to hear. "I mean don't get me wrong. Y'all are still the reason I keep on fighting, but I never realized how much having you and Rufus fighting with me changed how I viewed all this standard military shit. In Delta, everyone sees things one way, but you and Rufus made me think differently. You made me better. You still do."

Their eyes meet again, and for a moment he wishes their communication had never become so solid that he knew what she was thinking by looking into her golden irises because the conflict he sees tears at him. He longs to ask what he can do to ease her worry, but he knows this is something she has to do alone. She has to heal. She's still healing.

"Wyatt…" she whispers. A movement catches his eye. Her pinky is tapping rhythmically against the countertop. 3 quick taps. 3 longs taps. 3 quick taps. Does she even know she's doing it? Whether she does or not, he understands. She won't be raising her bet.

Not tonight.

"I should get home," she tells him, breaking their eye contact. "I have a lot to prepare for on Monday." She rushes past him, says her goodbyes to everyone still in the dining room, and is out the door before he can move from the spot she left him.

It was the one skill he had in the world of gambling, yet, in her case, he wishes he had never learned to read a tell.

* * *

 _Ooh, take a look at me now  
Well there's just an empty space  
And you coming back to me is against the odds  
And that's what I've got to face_


	4. Raise

Thank you for all the support for this fic! It really means a lot! So I ran out of song lyrics to add to the chapters because this story has just taken on a life of it's own, but y'all get the idea. I hope y'all enjoy this chapter and leave a review if you feel so inclined!

He gets the news on a Thursday.

Six months.

Undisclosed location.

He's never been so relieved and so frustrated at the same time. Finally he'll be out of the solitude of his apartment, back out in the world he's so used to. Or at least the world he was used to. Who knows how it'll feel now after all he's been through the past few years.

But he aches to think about all that could change while he's gone. Seven months since they finished Rittenhouse, seven months of walking the tightrope walk with Lucy, but despite that he loves where they've made it to now. They still have Friday night poker every week, but in the past couple of months Lucy, Rufus, and himself always found themselves getting drinks once a week at their old bar with Rufus tapping out pretty earlier than the other two.

And then he and Lucy would just talk. They would talk about everything. Strawberry milkshakes and cigar smoke. He told her how he learned to surf, she told him how her love for music was born, they argued about baseball, who would win in a fight between a cowboy and a ninja, aliens in Area 51, and the always present rivalry of Texas vs California. He opened up about his father, and she told him about hers. For the first time they got to be the friends they always wanted to be.

Their friendship in the beginning had come from necessity (although it's hard to determine where their general tolerance had ended and friendship began). If they hadn't allowed the walls of their stubbornness to come down, all three of them probably would have died, but that kind of friendship didn't allow for conversation like this. They never really had had the time.

And before they could have reached this point, he had fallen so hard he no longer knew which way was up. So in a way he's grateful for her putting the brakes on an actual relationship. He is learning about the Lucy before her life was flipped upside down, and while that Lucy sounds incredible, the one sitting in front of him will always be his preferred choice.

So what if all that progress is lost while he's away? He can't bear the thought of them being strangers again. What if he comes back and she's really moved on? He has to sit down to keep the nausea at bay. He wants her to be happy; Lord knows she deserves it more than any of them, but would he be able to remain in her life if that was the case? Is this how she felt when she was trapped in the bunker with Jessica? He feels his mind beginning to spiral.

 _Chill, Logan, you're thinking in complete hypotheticals._

He knows he's been doing the right thing by Lucy, waiting patiently for her shattered heart to heal. It's what she wanted. But shouldn't she know that he's still kept a dog in the fight? He figures she knows, but would it make a difference to hear him say it out loud? There is no guarantee he even comes back from this mission. Should she know before he leaves? Or would it make an already painful loss even more painful?

He needs another set of ears to help him figure it out. Maybe two. He picks up his phone and dials an all too familiar number.

* * *

Wyatt fidgets with his fingers as he waits for them to show up and wonders if this might have been a bad idea. Vulnerability isn't his favorite thing, but when it comes to matters involving Lucy, he'll gladly spill it all if it means sparing her pain.

"Good evening, Master Sergeant," Denise calls from behind, making him jump. He turns to see a bemused Denise and Michelle making their way his direction "You've never been easy to sneak up on, Wyatt," she observes. "What's got you so worked up?" Where to begin?

"That's a question for after a drink or two," he admits with a chuckle. "They're on me tonight." Before either of them can object he's already up from the booth, going to place their order.

This wasn't the first time the three of them had gone for drinks. After their mission together came to an end, Denise insisted on checking up on him at least a couple times a month despite his protests that he was fine. So as a compromise they agreed to meet for drinks every other Monday, to ease her concerns and to save him some of his dignity. This one he called tonight was an impromptu meeting, but he trusted the sound advice from the Homeland Security agent and her wife.

"Opening a tab, Mr. Logan?" The bartender inquires. He pretends to ignore the subtle flirtatious hint in her voice. He's had his fill of bartenders. But he still offers a kind smile.

"Yeup," he replies, sliding his card across the bar. "Starting with a white wine, an old-fashioned, and a Jameson." She just nods and goes to retrieve the drinks, the disappointment obvious in the droop of her shoulders. A twinge of guilt hits him. He's never been as smooth with women as some would think, but the thing he is the worst at is letting a woman know he's not interested. He usually just avoids it until it goes away, but in instances like this he fears it does more harm than good.

His mind for a moment drifts back to that poolside in 1941 where it was actually his all-consuming feelings that led his foot straight into his mouth.

 _"_ _You find me… intimidating?"_

 _"_ _Oh no I'm sorry; I didn't mean… you."_ Yes, he had.

 _"_ _I just mean, you're not hideous."_ No, that's not even close to what he had meant.

" _You had all the girls lined up around the block… just 'Hey, ladies'."_ How after that display Lucy thought he was some kind of wizard with women he'll never know.

But somehow the stars all aligned that night and all in their favor. Even with his idiotic words and horrible attempts at flattery, she had still flung herself into his arms moments later. He still thinks about the look on her face in those seconds before. Where there had been fear, there was now a hope he hadn't see from her in ages, since their talk of possibilities in the briefing room at Mason Industries. He so badly wanted to bring her that hope again. He's betting that Denise and Michelle can help him in the right direction.

"Here are those drinks, Mr. Logan," she smiles as the drinks are pushes his way. He nods his gratitude and skillfully yet carefully carries the three drinks back to their table.

They make small talk until the first round of drinks are gone. They talk about Mark's graduation and how neither of them were ready to have a son in college, and how Olivia is nervous about starting high school, and everything normal Wyatt can think to bring up, but as he returns with the second round, he knows by the looks on their faces that the time for stalling is over.

"I'm being deployed," he confesses after the first sip of his whiskey, and both women seem a little confused about what he's trying to imply.

"And you're…" Michelle begins. "Excited? Upset?" He just chuckles and shrugs.

"All of the above?" He sighs, setting his drink down with a _clink_ against the wood. "It's not the deployment. I've done so many that they don't phase me so much anymore. It's what I'll be missing that worries me." The woman share a knowing glance.

"Lucy," they say in sync, and Wyatt just raises his glass in their direction with a quick lift of his eyebrows.

"I've been waiting for her to come to terms with everything we went through, to re-adjust to normal life, to heal, and we're in a great place, but I can't help think… things might change while I'm gone if I don't say something to her before I leave. But at the same time, what if…" he takes a deep drink of the whiskey. "What if I don't come back? Would it be easier for her to never know.? To never hear me say what I really feel? Would it be worth it for her to have that reassurance only for me to not be able to make good on anything?" He downs the rest of the amber liquid. "You know?"

Both women share the same sympathetic smile, and Wyatt wonders if that's what being in love for so long does for you, makes you a mirror of the one you love. He wouldn't know.

"Wyatt," Michelle sighs, reaching across the table to place a hand on his. "I know you're scared. But something I've learned being married to a woman whose job doesn't guarantee safety is that even from day one I would rather have known and loved her when I could, rather then never knowing and maybe being spared a tiny bit of heartache." The raw emotion in her eyes is almost overwhelming. He has to look away before he responds.

"But what if it isn't that for her?," he questions, bringing his eyes back up to hers. "What if me being open just leads to more conflict in her that she doesn't need? I can't cause her more pain, Michelle. She's suffered enough by my hand." Michelle looks over at Denise who's just smiling and shaking her head. .

"Wyatt, I don't know everything that went on in the time you all spent together," Michelle explains. "But I know love when I see it. I see it in you, and believe it or not I see it in Lucy when she looks at you. She's still putting herself back together, sure, but she has a look in her eyes when she sees you that not many women will ever share. I say tell her while you can. You'll both be left with regrets if you don't." He offers her a soft smile before casting a glance over towards Denise who just shrugs and nods in agreement with her wife.

"You know what you need to do, Wyatt," she tells him.

Yeah he does.

He needs to raise his bet.

He orders another round of drinks.


	5. Fold

HAPPY FINALE DAY EVERYBODY! Here's to hoping NBC comes through and gives us the season 3 we deserve. Thanks to everyone who has been supporting this fic! (Special shout out to my brainy bunch) I hope y'all enjoy this chapter! Please leave a comment/review if you feel the calling to. Tell me your favorite quote, favorite scene, favorite moment! Knowing these things helps me bring you the quality content you want!

* * *

The next night at Denise's he breaks the news to everyone, and they react as well as anyone does. The news of deployment, is something no one, particularly people that aren't family, really knows what to do with. They don't know if they're supposed to be happy for their soldier, or sad, or if they can express their worry, or if it's best they keep it to themselves. Jiya hugs him, Rufus and Connor clap him on the back, but Lucy, for once, he can't really read. It's clear in the confusion on her face she feels like she should do _something_ _,_ but he takes the weight off of her by insisting they not worry about it and just get to the game. He'll take the time to talk to her afterwards.

They get through seven hands. Wyatt would normally have been out of chips by now, but he's had some fairly good luck tonight. He's won three out of the seven, the other four wins divided amongst the other four people at the table. The group agreed this eighth hand would be the last of night as it was already well past 11:00. They've made it to the Turn; he, Lucy, and Mason are the last ones to have cards still in play. Denise lays out the Turn Card.

Queen of Spades.

He spares a look into his hole cards. The Queen completes his Full House. He might go 4 for 8 tonight.

"300," he bets, placing his chips in the center of the table, eyeing Mason as he does so. There's a crinkle in the tech mogul's nose.

Bluff called.

"Argh," Mason grumbles. "Bloody hell, Logan, couldn't let me have this one, could you?" Wyatt just shrugs, and there's a residual chuckle that rings across the table. "I guess you know I'm folding." He places the cards on the table with a satisfying _slap_ _,_ sending the turn to Lucy.

"What'll it be, Dr. Preston?" Wyatt asks with a quirked eyebrow. A smile begins to form on her face, but he can tell by the way she bites the inside of her cheek that she is trying to keep a straight face. A _poker_ face, if you will. He casts a glance down at her right hand. Her little finger is raised slightly, like she can't decide yet if she's bluffing or not. She looks down at her hand and smirks.

"Raise," she responds. "600." Her six black chips find their way next to his three before Denise gathers them into the community pot. The winnings for this round have made it up to 1145. Wouldn't be a terrible way to go out for his last poker night. Denise lays of the final card.

Ace of Spades.

It doesn't help him much, but he watches her hand to see if it's what she needs. Still no movement, but it's still raised as if preparing to send out the distress signal. Maybe he needs to give her a little push.

"What's your bet, Wyatt?" Denise asks him. He takes a deep breath, knowing the deeper meaning of what he's about to do.

"All in," he calls to the table, pushing his pot into the center. There's a ring of exclamations from the others at the table, but Wyatt keeps a steady eye contact with Lucy, and what he sees is not quite what he expected. Where the was a growing air of confidence, there was now a subtle mix of confusion and, if he was reading her right, panic. She begins to lightly gnaw on her lip.

"Alright, Lucy," Jiya nudges her with her shoulder. "Think you've got the hand to risk it all."

 _Risk it all, Lucy._

The others think they see her tell, basically her sign of surrender, she doesn't have the hand, but when Wyatt takes another look, he knows nothing can be further from the truth.

Her pinky's dropped. No movement. Not the slightest twitch.

She's got the hand. He doesn't stand a chance.

Everyone's eyes are on her, and he's waiting for her to match his bet, to put everything in the open.

"Fold," she sighs, placing her cards face down on the table. There's another round of exclamations, and Lucy quickly joins in, laughing with the rest of them. Now it's Wyatt's turn to be stiff with confusion. There's a second where her eyes meet his again, but she quickly purses her lips, halting her laughter, and glances away.

She had every odd in her favor, and she didn't go through with the victory.

"Well go on, and collect your winnings, dude," Rufus laughs, slapping him on the back. "Hell of way to go out on our last night of poker with you for a while." He takes a second to collect himself before responding.

"Damn right, it is," he chuckles, drawing the winnings into his pot. "Hell of a way to go out."

If only it didn't feel like it cost him everything.

* * *

They all say their hesitant good-byes as the night comes to an end. They ask if they can see him off before he leaves, but he awkwardly declines. The days before a deployment have always been a very personal time for him. Jessica had always hated it. She had wanted to spend as much time together as they could, but he had been busy getting himself into the right mentality. Some of their biggest blow ups were the day leading up to him leaving.

Thankfully the people in his life now seem to maybe understand him a little bit better than that. Rufus giving him a slightly-less-than-cool-guy hug and Jiya making him promise that she'll see him again in six months. He makes his promise and she tackles him with one more big bear hug before she and Rufus are heading down the walk path to their car, a black Subaru with a Federation symbol and Rebel insignia on opposite sides of the back window.

He laughs softly at the nerdy rivalry between the couple, and slightly wishing that something so simple could be the only issue he faces with the woman standing behind him, leaning against the railing of Denise and Michelle's wrap around porch.

There's a soft glow emanating off of her in the dim light coming from the porch lamp. He loves seeing her so dressed down on nights like these, usually in nothing more than jeans and a t-shirt.

His mind wanders briefly to a home where he is and where she is and he can have her like this all the time.

Although without the shadow of anxiousness darkening her features. He knows there's no longer anything else left between them but the truth.

Raise.

"Can we talk?" He asks, mirroring her position from across the threshold.

"Of course," she smiles, but he can see the caution in her approach, like she knows what he's about to do.

Call.

"I thought I was going to be relieved when I finally got news of being shipped out, again," he begins, not knowing a better place to start. "Thought it was going to be what I needed to find a groove again, to break out of the routine."

"And it's not?" She questions. He simply chuckles and shakes his head.

"It's not," he admits, lightly pouring a fist on the wooden railing, trying to think of the right words. "Yeah all the repetitive training and work and going home only to wake up do the same hasn't exactly been a dream, but it's this—" he gestures around them. "For the first time in almost five years, Lucy, I'm going to be going somewhere where I don't get to have all of you, my team, beside me. I mean, really, how am I supposed to function without you spouting history into one ear and Rufus panicking into the other?" The both laugh at that and it helps to lessen the weight between them.

"You won't need a whole lot of history where you're going," she reminds him with a smirk. "I wouldn't be much help. More a hindrance than anything." That causes the smile to drop from his lips just a bit.

"Do you really believe that you were nothing more than a walking history book for me in all this time?" He asks in disbelief, not that he would actually be surprised if her answer was yes. She's never seen herself like he has.

"It's what I was hired for in the first place, right?" She shrugs. "I mean, just think of the shit that went down when I wasn't there to keep you two in line." It's true; he and Rufus had been a ticking time bomb without their historian there to keep it all glued together. Things went haywire whenever Lucy had been left behind.

That's what he's afraid of now.

"Maybe it's why you were hired, and, yeah, we were always pretty helpless when you weren't around, but c'mon, Lucy." He takes a couple bold steps towards her, still leaving a fair amount of space, but forcing them both to recognize that whatever is about to go down. It's them. Together. "The Alamo? Watergate? Bonnie and Clyde? Darlington? When I got arrested in the hospital? Hell, even the night before I stole the Lifeboat. I could keep going, but don't you get it? Through everything, through all this time travelling madness you have been my rock. My partner. My best friend." He feels his throat ache and it's only then that he feels the tears lightly pressing against his eyes, and from the way her eyes are shining he knows she's feeling the weight of his words as well. "How am I supposed to fight when I don't have you there to keep me grounded?" She blinks rapidly, clearly trying to push the tears away, wiping a stray hair away from her forehead.

"I don't know, Wyatt," she breathes, looking out to the street instead of at him. He makes one last step forward, eliminating nearly all the distance between them.

"I do," he whispers, tilting her chin up as gently as he can manage, giving her any opportunity to turn away.

She doesn't.

The heat of their stare burns.

"Back in 1944, when you told me you didn't think you could keep going on, keep fighting, I told you to figure out what you're fighting for. I explained that for all my life I had been fighting for my Grandpa, the man who saved me from a life of abuse and crime, but that's not the case anymore. It hasn't been for a long time. I'm fighting for the woman who saved me from myself, from the broken, hallow man who let himself suffer in grief and rage for too long." He takes a moment to let the words settle, a faint orchestra of summer cicadas ring through the night air. She shifts her gaze back and forth across his face like she's searching for something to understand.

"Wyatt, what are you trying to say?" There's a desperation in her voice, telling him it's time to stop with the riddles, the in-between-the-lines messages.

All in.

"I want to come home to my best friend," he confesses with baited breath. "In any way that she'll have me."

"In any way?" She asks as if unsure he means it or even what it means at all.

"Lucy, dammit, I love you with every part of me that I was unsure how I managed this long without being with you, but I realized it's because I still am lucky enough to be the one to get drinks without every week, to kick your ass in poker, to have James Bond movie marathons with you and Rufus. If that's all I can ever have then I can live with that, but…" He runs a thumb across her cheek. "If there's a possibility of us of… of Logan and Preston… then you know what I would prefer." Her eyes flutter shut at the words, and he takes it as a positive sign, leaning in slowly and brushing her nose with the tip of his, encouraging her face to tilt up just so—

"Wyatt," she whispers, turning her head away.

Fold.

He lets out a regretful sigh, leaning back against the wooden slat behind him. He wants to be angry, but he can never be, not with her, not when he's the one who messed this up in the first place.

"I'm sorr—"

"No, Lucy," he stops her. "Don't you dare say you're sorry. If either one of us has anything to be sorry for it's me. I'm sorry for running out of the bunker after 1941. I'm sorry for not seeing the truth about Jess. I'm sorry for allowing you to think you were not always my first choice. My only choice. I'm sorry for putting you in danger, for breaking your heart, and for any other jackass thing I've done to hurt you. Lucy, you deserve so much better than anything I could ever offer, so believe me when I say I understand. But I also meant it when I said that I'll take your friendship any way you will offer it. Is that something we can still do?" There's a moment of silence where his question hangs in there air.

Maybe he just blew it.

He's relieved when a soft smile spreads across her face even though it might not reach her brown eyes.

"Of course," she tells him. "You're my best friend too, Wyatt; I can't lose that." He nods with pursed lips.

It's enough.

It has to be.

"Will I see you again before you leave?" Lucy asks. Wyatt has to take a second to answer because even he doesn't know.

"I don't think so, Lucy," he confesses. "I need some… personal time before I ship out." It's a half truth. The time he needs is time to process this. He's going to leave, he might come back, and if he does, this is all it will be. Seeing her again would just make it that much harder.

She just nods solemnly, not saying a word in response. They both cast their glance toward the road that passes in front of the house.

 _Now you know. You can move on._

"On that note," he pretends to laugh the tension away. "About time we got off Denise and Michelle's porch, don't ya think?" There's an air of sadness about her that he doesn't know how to translate. A year and a half ago he would have gathered her in his arms and offered any and all reassurance that she wasn't alone, that she had him. But it's all tainted now. Any physical contact is heavy with what once was. So now he just tilts his head towards their respective vehicles and hopes she follows.

She does. They walk side by side down the walkway, holding on to the last moment together before entering an unknown kind of separation, but, as many things have recently, the small path comes to an end.

"Come back in one piece?" She asks, locking her brown eyes onto his.

"I'll do my best." He has no more intentions of making promises he can't keep. In another world she would have jumped into his arms, but here she just nods. And that would have been it, but as they're walking to their cars, he realizes there is one more question he needs answered.

"Hey, Lucy?" He calls, and it's like she had forgotten he was there by the way she jumps at his voice, hand locked around the handle of her door. "That last hand… uh, why did you fold?" She seems taken aback by the question, but eventually just explains it away with "I was bluffing. Didn't have the hand."

"You weren't bluffing," he corrects her. "You wanted them to think you were bluffing by biting your lip, but that's not your tell, is it? You're too smart for that." She puts on a feign look of confusion and he can't help but feel a twinge of irritation. Did she think he wouldn't notice?

"What's my tell, then, Wyatt?" She asks in exasperation.

"You… you tap out SOS in Morse code with your pinky finger," he answers, gesturing towards her right hand. The only light around them is from the single lamp on the porch, yet no one could have missed they way her eyes grew at the accusation.

"How'd you know?"

"Because I _know_ you, Lucy," he laughs in disbelief. "So answer the question: why did you fold? Your fingers were still. You had the hand to win. All odds in your favor. So why?"

"It wasn't a sure win," she explains. "Straight flush. Still could've been beat."

"Yeah, but the odds were—"

"Good odds have never been enough for me, Wyatt," she all but snaps. "Sure things or nothing at all. I've played with the odds too much the past few years… it never ended up working in my favor." The words go beyond any dumb poker game, into a realm of farmhouses and guest rooms, and lost sisters and fallen mothers, and a woman who has never reaped the benefits of all she sacrificed.

In retrospect, he would've folded too. A lot sooner than she had.

Before he has a chance to respond, her brake lights are shining into his eyes, framing his face in red.

Maybe he should have folded.


	6. Risk

This chapter is Fold, but from Lucy's point of view. Hope you enjoy some more angst! It ends soon I promise! Thank you for the positive response for this story! Please leave a review if you enjoy what you read :)

* * *

"What'll it be, Dr. Preston?" Wyatt asks her with a quirked eyebrow. She feels a smile begin to pull on her face, but she bites the inside of her cheek to hold it off. She glances down to her cards. An Ace of Spades short of a Royal Flush… She considers the odds of the next card _actually_ being what she needs. It's not a great gamble, but with Wyatt looking at her like that, like he's daring her, she feels a surge of boldness.

"Raise," she smirks. "600." Wyatt's eyebrows lift a tad in surprise, she doesn't tend to raise the bet. Her six black chips find their way next to his three before Denise gathers them into the community pot. She can't remember exactly what the winnings for this round have accumulated to, but she knows its a fairly sizable amount.

"Call," he says simply, setting his chips out

Denise lays of the final card.

Ace of Spades.

She has to physically stop herself from gasping. She has it. The hand is hers. What are the odds? She looks toward the only other person still in play who is looking fairly nonchalantly at the Ace.

"What's your bet, Wyatt?" Denise asks him. He leans back in his seat, taking a deep breath. What's he thinking?

"All in," Wyatt calls to the table, pushing his pot into the center, keeping his eyes locked on hers. Everyone else laughs excitedly at this new development, but Lucy is frozen.

She's never been an expert at reading people, understanding what they're thinking behind their eyes, and that has never played to her advantage in poker. When Amy would drag her away from her work and to a friend's poker night, her younger sister had always been able to find people's tells and ticks, but Lucy would try and just fall flat, over analyzing every movement to death.

But then there had been Wyatt.

She caught his tell on the first night so many months ago. It was so him that she almost laughed out loud. Her ever present soldier, his trigger finger twitches when there are things on the line. But she had noticed something else over the next couple months.

His tell has nothing to do with bluffing. Wyatt Logan doesn't bluff. He rarely folds and typically bets high, but not because he's trying to urge other people to fold, but because even in the highest stakes, odds-stacked-against-him situations, Wyatt truly believes he can still win, or he's going to go down trying, and that's when his tells shows.

That's where his tell is showing now.

But when Lucy reads into his eyes just a little too much, she doesn't think this risk has anything to do with poker. He's looking at her with the same gaze he had once upon a time in a dreamland. A dreamland where he had tried and failed to flirt but succeed to make her fall with the light of a pool illuminating his face and the stars punctuating his eyes. When he had taken a gamble on her and whispered "Now?" into the cool night air. The air between them then as thick as it is at this old poker table in their former superior's home.

Her heart accelerates, but she tries to keep her breath visibly calm. For the first time since the hospital room, he's putting possibilities out there for him to grasp, asking her to put her everything in the open just like he has.

"Alright, Lucy." Jiya's nudge to her shoulder almost makes her jump from her seat. "Think you've got the hand to risk it all?"

She does. She could put her everything in and get it back in ten fold. There's a moment where she feels the pull to do just that… to get back to pool sides and guest rooms and old cars and coastlines and checkers… but isn't there always a moment after? A moment where what you thought you had in your hands falls apart… the moment of alarms and witches and knives and dead ex-wives and hospitals and noises that keep people up at night and vodka and betrayal and shattered hearts, and it all started with the moment she thought she could have it all.

"Fold." The word is out of her mouth before she can think, and the look of anguish that flashes across Wyatt's face is another kind of knife piercing through her porcelain skin to her blood red heart.

Was it worth it?

* * *

"Can we talk?" Wyatt asks, joining her up on the porch, but leaving a fair amount of distance between them. A chasm between hearts.

"Of course," Lucy smiles. She's under no delusion that the conversation that's about to happen won't leave both of them reeling, but there's a part of her that aches for him and there's another that simply can't take running anymore.

"I thought I was going to be relieved when I finally got news of being shipped out, again," he begins bluntly, shoving his hands into the worn pockets of his faded jeans. "Thought it was going to be what I needed to find a groove again, to break out of the routine."

"And it's not?" She questions. A chuckle rumbles from him and he drops his chin to his chest, shaking his head lightly

"It's not," he admits, lightly pounding a fist on the wooden railing, casting his gaze out to the street, leading his eyes into the shadows. "Yeah all the repetitive training and work and going home only to wake up do the same hasn't exactly been a dream, but it's this—" he gestures vaguely around them. "For the first time in almost five years, Lucy, I'm going to be going somewhere where I don't get to have all of you, my team, beside me. I mean, really, how am I supposed to function without you spouting history into one ear and Rufus panicking into the other?" She can't help but laugh at that. He really had always been the focal point of hers and Rufus' occasional hysteria during their trips. When they panicked, Wyatt would calm them down, help them see straight, and bring the mission home.

The real question, she wonders, is how _they're_ going to function without _him_.

"You won't need a whole lot of history where you're going," she puts on a smirk, but the words just remind her how much he doesn't really need her anymore. "I wouldn't be much help. More a hindrance than anything." Her clumsiness, her chronic worrying, her obsession to detail, they served their purpose (well maybe not the clumsiness) in the past, but these were things that would get him killed in the world he's going back into.

"Do you really believe that you were nothing more than a walking history book for me in all this time?" He asks in disbelief. She has to take a second to respond because she knows she was— _is—_ more to him in a sense, but through the lens of their missions, it's exactly what she was.

"It's what I was hired for in the first place, right?" She shrugs. "I mean, just think of the shit that went down when I wasn't there to keep you two in line." She knows she had been a sort of historical glue for them. She would've killed to see what exactly went down in with them plus Flynn when they went to go save JFK.

"Maybe it's why you were hired, and, yeah, we were always pretty helpless when you weren't around, but c'mon, Lucy." He walks toward her and she stops breathing for a moment. He halts well within what would qualify as an acceptable amount of space for a conversation, but for the purpose of this discussion it forces her to acknowledge that there is a _something_ between them. It wouldn't feel like this if there wasn't. "The Alamo? Watergate? Bonnie and Clyde? Darlington? When I got arrested in the hospital? Hell, even the night before I stole the Lifeboat. I could keep going, but don't you get it? Through everything, through all this time travelling madness you have been my rock. My partner. My best friend." She can hear the tightness in his voice even though she can count on one hand how many times she's heard him so close to tears. She feels pretty close to tears herself. "How am I supposed to fight when I don't have you there to keep me grounded?" When the tears begin to blur her vision, gathering on her eyelashes, she tries to blink them away. _His rock?_ How could she have made him feel so safe when he was always the one to save her from drowning?

"I don't know, Wyatt," she breathes, forcing herself to look away. The intensity of his gaze heating her to dangerous degrees. Out of the corner of her eyes she sees him step forward, leaving them without a barrier.

"I do," he whispers. His fingers are gentle yet firm beneath her chin, slowly tilting her face towards him as if asking permission to look into her eyes.

Stars colliding couldn't burn this bright.

"Back in 1944, when you told me you didn't think you could keep going on, keep fighting, I told you to figure out what you're fighting for. I explained that for all my life I had been fighting for my Grandpa, the man who saved me from a life of abuse and crime, but that's not the case anymore. It hasn't been for a long time. I'm fighting for the woman who saved me from myself, from the broken, hallow man who let himself suffer in grief and rage for too long." Any breath she had is caught in her throat. It's all too real. Too fast. Too close to everything she wants.

"Wyatt, what are you trying to say?" She tries to sound strong, but it comes out as pleading.

"I want to come home to my best friend," he confesses with baited breath. "In any way that she'll have me." The breath that had been caught escapes in a rush. She wishes she had the option to press pause on all of this, to dwell on the words and what the could mean, the way she does with books. But it's here and it's now, and the look in his eyes calls into her for an answer.

"In any way?" She clarifies.

"Lucy, dammit, I love you with every part of me that I was unsure how I managed this long without being with you, but I realized it's because I still am lucky enough to be the one to get drinks without every week, to kick your ass in poker, to have James Bond movie marathons with you and Rufus. If that's all I can ever have then I can live with that, but…" His thumb glances her cheek. "If there's a possibility of us of… of Logan and Preston… then you know what I would prefer." For a moment her eyes close and she dreams. Dreams of firelight and blurred eyes. Where his nose is brushing against her and he's leaning in… but then she feels it. The finger directly beneath her chin, his trigger finger… it's twitching, and she wakes up. Everything, he's putting everything out there, and he doesn't think he can actually win.

It's real. It's not Hollywood. It's real, and it's him, and there's too much on the line, and she can't.

"Wyatt," she whispers, turning her head away.

A single sigh speaks long speeches of regret and his head lightly fall against the wooden slat behind him. Her own regret sparks in her heart. She shouldn't have been so selfish to let herself remember the rush, hang it in front of him, then yank it away.

"I'm sorr—"

"No, Lucy," he stops her. "Don't you dare say you're sorry. If either one of us has anything to be sorry for it's me. I'm sorry for running out of the bunker after 1941. I'm sorry for not seeing the truth about Jess. I'm sorry for allowing you to think you were not always my first choice. My only choice. I'm sorry for putting you in danger, for breaking your heart, and for any other jackass thing I've done to hurt you. Lucy, you deserve so much better than anything I could ever offer, so believe me when I say I understand. But I also meant it when I said that I'll take your friendship any way you will offer it. Is that something we can still do?" She takes a second to let the weight of his words wash over her, wondering if it could really be true. Whether it is or not, if she's certain of anything it is that she cannot lose the man standing in front of her.

"Of course," she tells him. "You're my best friend too, Wyatt; I can't lose that." He nods with pursed lips, but his gaze falls to the ground.

"Will I see you again before you leave?" She asks, hoping that he'll say yes, that they won't leave things like this.

"I don't think so, Lucy," he confesses. "I need some… personal time before I ship out." She shouldn't feel so disappointed by the words. Personal time. Isn't that what she's been asking from him for months? The least she can do is give it back to him now.

If only she were better at being selfish.

She just nods solemnly, not saying a word in response. They both cast their glance toward the road that passes in front of the house

"On that note." His laugh is about as fake as the smile he plastered on. "About time we got off Denise and Michelle's porch, don't ya think?" She can't move just yet. She's so wrapped up in the words he shared, in the fact that after this he's going to walk away only to be shipped off to some godforsaken country, in the part of her that wants to fling herself back into his strong embrace because it's him. It's only ever going to be him. But she can't… so she just follows him down the steps in silence.

"Come back in one piece?" It's the only thing she can think to say, but it carries her greatest fear with it.

"I'll do my best." She appreciates him not promising anything. Neither of them know if he can do just that, but they take the hope that they can.

There's a moment where she feels pull, a tug, like a rope is urging her to jump into his arms as she would have done so long ago, but she knows if she gives in now then there would be no going back. Not for her. So she turns and she begins to walk away.

"Hey, Lucy?" He calls after her , and she physically jumps, keeping her hand locked in a death grip around her door handle. "That last hand… uh, why did you fold?" She's taken aback by the slight accusation behind the question. How could he have known?

"I was bluffing. Didn't have the hand."

"You weren't bluffing," he corrects her. "You wanted them to think you were bluffing by biting your lip, but that's not your tell, is it? You're too smart for that."

She's shocked, but tries to appear as oblivious as possible. He can't know why.

"What's my tell, then, Wyatt?" She shoots back, her fear making her defensive. He can't know.

"You… you tap out SOS in Morse code with your pinky finger," he answers, gesturing towards her right hand. She feels her eyes go wide.

"How'd you know?" He can't.

"Because I _know_ you, Lucy," he laughs like it's the most obvious thing. "So answer the question: why did you fold? Your fingers were still. You had the hand to win. All odds in your favor. So why?"

"It wasn't a sure win," she blatantly lies. "Straight flush. Still could've been beat."

"Yeah, but the odds were—"

"Good odds have never been enough for me, Wyatt." She snaps. Her patience is overtaken by her fear. He knows her. He's seen through her. "Sure things or nothing at all. I've played with the odds too much the past few years… it never ended up working in my favor." Even in the moment where every odd is for her, she is not going to allow the chance for heartbreak again. Another break and she will shatter, another break and she will never be able to piece herself back together.

He's stood frozen at her outburst for too long. If he gets another chance to speak, who knows what will happen. She has to get out. She runs.

She's in the car, driving away before she allows herself to remember… remember a night too long ago where Amy taught her how to play the game and made her promise something too big for either of them to understand.

* * *

" _My gosh, Lucy, you're so obvious when you lie, you're not going to last a single hand," Amy sighs. "You don't have one tell, you have like seven. You bite your lip, twirl your hair, blink a lot, even sweat, like damn, Lucy, is it that hard for you to lie?" Lucy isn't quite sure how should respond to her 20-year-old sister criticizing her inability to lie, but she just shrugs._

 _"_ _I don't like lying," she responds, leaning her head onto her hand._

 _"_ _Yeah, I'm aware," Amy laughs. "You don't like anything fun._ _"_ _Lucy is about to argue that, yes, she does, in fact. It's just that her idea of fun and Amy's differ greatly, but she keeps it to herself. It's pretty useless arguing with her spitfire sister._

 _"_ _Okay since you have so many natural tells, let's try giving you a new on to focus your nervous lying energy on, m'kay?" She knows that Amy is going to make her regardless of if she protests, so she plays along._

 _"_ _Alright, so what'll it be?" Amy mirrors her pose with one hand holding up her head and analyzes her older sister, twitching her lips from side to side as she does, and then Lucy sees a light bulb go off._

 _"_ _Okay, I got it," she laughs. "You're going to love this one, right up your alley." Lucy is a little nervous as to what Amy qualifies as "right up her alley," but she goes with it. "So anytime you're bluffing and you start to panic I want you to signal me," Amy tells her, but that doesn't really give Lucy any indication on what the physical tell is._

 _"_ _Signal you how?" Lucy asks, over exaggerating her enthusiasm, earning a mock glare from Amy._

 _"_ _What I want you to do is tap out SOS," she explains. "In Morse Code. With your pinky." The two girls had learned Morse code as kids to communicate around their parents, so it made sense for them to utilize it now. "Keep it real subtle, and keep with the lip biting so it gives them something else to look at, although I doubt you could stop with the lip biting if you tried." That earns Amy a playful punch to the arm. "Do all of that and you'll be golden. Think you can manage that?" She tries it a couple times and finds it fairly simple, especially for her smaller hands._

 _"_ _Yeah I think I got it," she grins. "But what if someone catches on?" Amy just laughs._

 _"_ _If a girl catches onto this, then you make her your best friend because that means there is someone just as nerdy as you, but if you find you a man that catches on…" Amy's smile gets a bit bigger. "You marry that boy because that's soul mate kinda shit right there."_

 _Lucy laughs out loud at that._

 _"_ _I don't think you have to worry about soul mates for me, Ames. I'm not exactly what every guy dreams of." Amy just shrugs and sits back in her chair._

 _"_ _One day, Luce, mark my words. You'll find him. He's gonna be something you never expected. He's not going to be a professor or a historian or anything like that, but he's going to know you better than anyone like that ever could, and when that day come, do me a favor would you?"_

 _"_ _What?" Lucy asks, ready to promise whatever to her sister in terms of love because she's not foolish enough to believe it could happen to her anyway._

 _"_ _When it happens…" she begins. "Don't run away like you always do. Run towards it. Forget mom and responsibilities and reason, and just run towards him. I'm tired of seeing you give up on what could have been great."_

* * *

Lucy doesn't realize the tears falling down her cheeks until her blurred vision almost causes her to run a red light. She wipes them from her face and glances towards her hand, the red of the stop light reflecting in the moisture.

"That wasn't it, Amy," she whispers to the vacant passenger seat. "Soul mates were always for you, not for me."

The light shifts to green and she makes her way through the street, steeling herself against the gaping vacancy she feels in her heart, in her car, in the world around her.

Her heart is something she will never risk again. Not for Wyatt Logan. Not for anyone.


	7. All In

Next chapter is here! As always thank you so much for your reviews and comments and support!

* * *

War is hell.

It's hot and disgusting and dangerous and bloody and everything most humans spend their lives running away from while the rest, a small group of certifiably insane people, himself included, run straight towards it.

It's hell, yet… for him it used to be the time of his life. Being with his brothers, blowing shit up, stopping the bad guys, it was everything he'd dreamed of since his days as a rebel teen in West Texas. Then Syria happened… and the illusion shattered. People die. Friends, comrades, brothers all die. You won't be lucky enough to perish with them. They might even die because of you. Then Jessica happened…. and all sense of purpose was locked away with her lifeless body in the coroner's office and lowered into the ground a week later. She died because of him. Then Mason Industries happened. And another dream took place. A new team, a new family of two completely inexperienced civilians was dropped into his lap, placed into his protection. There had been presidents and spies and rockets and betrayals and moon landings and hooch and serial killers and shadow governments and somewhere in there… he fell in love. Lucy was everything he never thought he needed in a partner. She was bossy, cautious, outspoken, stubborn, and acted like she knew it all (which he knows now it's not that far fetched of an assumption). Then the Alamo happened... it hadn't hit him until much later that night when he was sitting alone in his apartment, watching an old western. He must've been too caught up in the adrenaline of near death, but when he realizes it, he nearly chokes on his whiskey.

Lucy's the only person who's ever been able to draw him out of a flashback. If Jessica had ever tried to touch him, she became part of the spell, and he would physically recoil from her. The look of hurt he saw the first time it happened sent him to PTSD counseling the next week, but she never tried to interfere with him during those moments again.

But Lucy, her touch and her voice, even in the midst of an entirely different level of hell, brought him back, calmed him, and her refusal to abandon him to die created a spark in him. Not love, not yet, but a desire. A desire for love, for the ability to heal and move forward. A desire to be a better man for her.

Then Rittenhouse happened.

They stole her, they tortured her, they brought Jessica back, they tried to wreck everything he and Lucy had created, and up until now they've succeeded.

War is hell.

And he didn't realize until now that it's even worse when you feel like you have nothing to lose.

The months drag by. Five down. One to go. Missions are successful. It almost feels like it used to. He can keep distracted with the work to be done, he laughs with his boys in their leisure time, but when they offer to play poker, he politely but adamantly declines, making up some bullshit excuse about trying to quit gambling.

If only.

"You alright there, Logan?" One of his oldest Delta friends, "Old man" as he had been called since boot camp as he was the oldest out of their group by 3 years, comes up behind him, a heavy hand falling to his shoulder. "Seem a little off there, brother."

"Oh yeah, man, I'm doin' fine," he lies, quickly wracking his brain for a change of subject as he takes a seat across from him. "How are Angela and the girls? I haven't gotten the chance to ask you since I came back."

"Back from the four year super secret mission in the incredibly suburban Palo Alto that had everyone thinking you were dead?" He eyes Wyatt inquisitively. Old Man isn't the first to probe him with question about what he's been up to the past few years, but he always just shrugs it off, knowing that the possible consequences for spilling such confidential information far outweighed anything he'd gain from it. "Alright, you keep your secrets," he laughs before reaching around to grab something from his bunk. "As for Angela and the girls, they're doing amazing as ever. Angela's bakery is gaining some real notice around LA. It's been her dream since we met in college, and I can't wait til I get to be back with her, supporting her in every way I can. I mean, not to brag but I do have some mad skills with cupcakes." Wyatt cracks a laugh at that, trying to imagine the giant that is Old Man with an apron on in a small little kitchen, frosting cupcakes, but he can't be a twinge envious about the way he gets to talk about his wife.

A lot of the men in his unit have been married, but almost everyone has ended with a nasty divorce, child custody battles, and a loneliness that lead to a lifestyle Wyatt isn't too proud to say he partook in for a while, but Old Man and Angela had gotten married right before his first deployment some 12 years ago, and, as far as Wyatt knew, the two are as happy now as they had been back then.

War might have been hell for them, but they left behind a different kind of hell for the ones they loved. It's why so many attempts at wedded bliss failed. Not getting consumed and torn apart by the lonely nights and constant worry took a different kind of partner than was readily available. It's why he and Jessica fell apart, and if he's being completely honest with himself, it's why he knew they had been doomed from the beginning. Jessica was strong, stubborn, independent, but she also never understood what would come with the life they signed up for in high school. She couldn't deal with the secrets and rushed exits, the exhaustion from missed holiday and ever present fear. This life had never been for her.

"And the girls, they're growing so fast, man," he continues, showing him the picture he'd pulled from his pack. Angela sit's with her arms wrapped around their two girls, all three beaming for the camera. Missing teeth, and pigtails, and a literal white fence scream of a domesticity Wyatt doubts he'll ever experience. "Bri starts third grade this fall and Lizzy starts first." He leans back and runs a hand across his mouth. "It's the first time in my life I've really felt like the Old Man," he laughs. "But I'm just praying that we're back home in time for me to see it all." Wyatt just purses his lips and nods. They never offer each other false hope or guarantees. It's the lack of guarantees that makes them the most effective soldiers. Fight each fight like it's your last, and you might just make it out.

"What about you, Logan?" Wyatt lifts his eyes to meet Old Man's, shrugging like he doesn't understand what he's asking.

"What about me?"

"I know the divorce with Jessica must have been tough, but we'd talked more than once about how that love you both had was gone long before the papers were signed." _You have no idea, man._ "And it's been well over a year now. Anyone new come into your life?" Well that's a loaded question if he'd ever heard one.

"It's complicated," he laughs, running a nervous hand through his increasingly lengthy hair.

"Hey, you don't have to say a word of it if you don't want to," Old Man explains, holding his hands up in surrender. "You're like a kid brother to me, Logan. Always have been. I just want the best for you." They remain there for a beat, soaking in the rare, truly heartfelt moment before Old Man slaps him on the knee as he stands up. "Well I gotta get back to it. Trigger bet me fifty dollars and his stash of cigars that my old ass couldn't kick his in Super Smash Brothers which apparently he thinks is the only game I have knowledge of, you know… cause I'm so old." They share a hearty laugh at that, but before Old Man takes his last exit, he pauses.

"She looks like a good one," he smiles cheekily as if he knows something he shouldn't.

"Who does?" Wyatt asks, unsure as to what he means.

"The brunette in the picture you keep beside your bunk. If it's her, I'd say it looks like a pretty damn good match." Wyatt's too stunned to reply. He doesn't exactly hide the photo, but he never guessed one of his buddies could've picked up on his connection to Lucy through that alone. He leans over and picks it up, eyeing it with great care. It's a pretty cheesy picture all things considered. It was from his last poker night before he shipped out, Rufus had insisted on a group selfie to commemorate it. He's wearing his typical, wide-mouthed, goofy smile beside Jiya who's smiling just as big and just a goofy. _Match made in Heaven those two,_ he thinks. Denise is looking down as she shuffles the cards, a loving smirk still visible though, Connor is eyeing the camera with a hint of skepticism, and he's in the back of the picture. A smile present, but his attention not on the camera. It's all on Lucy, sitting beside him her mouth open mid-laugh.

* * *

" _Guys," Rufus grabs all their attention. "Get ready to smile. Gotta document our last poker night with Wyatt before he's off to save the world in the present for once." He scoffs at his friend's remark._

" _What's that for?" Lucy asks, her smile bright and directed solely towards him. He isn't sure how to take six months without her._

" _Youth these days with their selfies and Snapchats and all that," he elaborates with a grin, and when her smile bursts out into a laugh is when Rufus snaps the picture._

" _Youth?" She asks between laughs. "Okay, grandpa. Get to your seat so I can kick your ass in poker tonight."_

* * *

Feeling a tug too strong to resist, he picks up his phone and dials.

" _Yello?"_ Just the voice brings the longing for home in full force.

"Hey, Rufus," he greets. "It's me."

" _Wyatt?! Jiya, it's Wyatt!"_ He can hear the distant shriek some few thousand miles away.

" _Well put him on speaker!"_ He hears her demand.

" _Oh duh. Can you hear both of us now, man?"_

"Yeah. Yeah I can," he laughs. "How are things back at the home front?"

" _Pretty good. Nothing too exciting,"_ Rufus shares. " _Mason's working on some new deals with Lockman that's had us working off our asses, but it's all good things for him and for us. With what he's paying us now, we're looking at getting a house in the fall."_

" _And a dog!"_ Jiya adds.

" _Yes and a dog,"_ Rufus laughs. " _But what about you, man? How's wherever the hell you are?"_

"Hot," Wyatt scoffs. "Dry. Too many alpha males in a single living space. Not enough pilots or historians or psychics." He says it as a joke, but the words are heavy with the truth he never thought he would have to face. "Other than that I can't say much else."

" _I've got some pretty high clearance after all the time-traveling, taking down of secret societies shit."_ He jokingly insists, but when the pause hovers too long, he answers the question Wyatt can't bring himself to ask.

" _I'm sure there's some reason you're not outright asking, but Lucy's doing fine. From what we see of her, she's mostly just getting through day to day. Although, she's been a little off since you left. Always checking her phone, getting jumpy when Michelle has the news on and they talk about anything related to military operations. I don't know if she's trying to be discrete about it or not, but she's worried."_ He feels the usual twinge of guilt at Rufus' words. Even when he was with Jessica, any reminder of how their absence from home affects their loved ones leads to a storm of conflict. " _I mean that's how it was last time we saw her. She hasn't been at poker night the past few weeks."_ And with the one admission, Wyatt's mind is going over every possibility of what it could mean, if she's okay, if she's better, if she's found something that makes her happy. _Or someone,_ another voice taunts, but he's not having it. If she's happy, then that's all he needs to know.

" _Have you called her?"_ Jiya asks softly. " _I think she'd love to hear from you."_ He doesn't know what his friends know of his and Lucy's final interaction, what she's disclosed to them, but it's the last thing either of them need, he believes, to force themselves through the small talk they've been reduced to. What the hell would he say to her otherwise? As much as he longs to be washed in the feelings of warmth and home that her voice brings, he could never bring himself to put her through that. She needs her space, she made that very clear, and he would be damned if he didn't give it to her this time.

"We… uh… we're giving each other some space," he admits. "Our last goodbye wasn't exactly picture perfect, and she made some things pretty evident." They don't respond right away but he knows the couple well enough he can almost see the scene played out, meeting eyes and speaking through them like cans linked by a string.

" _I know it's been a rough go at it for you two, Wyatt, but she…"_ He holds his breath in anticipation for what his friend's next words will be. " _Just… think about calling her, okay?"_

"Is there something you're not telling me?" There's an air of intentional vagueness that just rubs him the wrong way. There's another stretch of silence.

" _It's just… it feels like she's running away. Like I said she hasn't been coming to poker night, she's been cancelling on drinks, turning us down when we invite her over. She says it's because her job has her slammed, but we're worried about her."_ He feels nauseous, and he can't stop the guilt from churning his already guilt-stricken heart. It was him. He should've just said his good-bye that night, never burdened her with the weight of his truth.

"Hey, guys, I'm sorry, but I've gotta go," he lies, fearing just what he'll learn if they continue down this path.

" _Oh, okay,"_ Rufus sighs, sounding disappointed in him. He can't help but feel a little of that shame himself, but what Rufus doesn't understand is that it was all him. All his doing that Lucy's like this, and hearing from him would only increase the hurt.

" _Try and stay safe,"_ Jiya insists.

"I'll try."

" _And, Wyatt,"_ Rufus puts off ending the call for one more moment. " _I know you're busy saving the world and all that, but just… if you get the chance… call her, okay?"_

"Yeah, man," he states. "I will." The line goes dead.

* * *

The last month passes as slowly as the past five combined. He never finds it in him to pick up the phone again. He craves the sound of her voice so much that his appetite for much of anything else diminishes. He eats enough to stay strong for the last few missions. He executes them flawlessly. The thrill is almost enough to curb his longing to be home.

He doesn't call.

There's a part of him that's convinced all this ache she's experiencing is from a the words he placed on her, the ones she never asked for, and the only thing that will free her from them is the distance she adamantly asked for. He was never one to deny her anything, and that doesn't change now.

A breath of relief fills the air as they touch down at Pendleton. They all hold it on the way in, knowing that if they breathe too soon, they could jinx it all, bring the plane crashing down 10 miles from the California coast. It's stupid, but none of them have ever dared risking it. Not when they're so close to surviving just one more deployment.

But even after touching down on the airfield, saying his goodbyes, and hopping into his car, he can't find the ease to breathe.

He's driving the hundreds of miles back to a house that's empty. Alone.

And just like that he's wishing he were back in the fire of war.

Contentment isn't for the lonely. Not when you're heart is so irrevocably in the grasp of someone who no longer wants it.

But content is what he'll be. For his own sanity it's what he has to be. He's fallen down the well of self-pity and despair before and what you don't realize before you tip yourself backwards is that that particular well has no bottom, no water to drown you, no ground to crush you. No, you just fall and the further you fall the more desperately you wish for the end. But in this place, if you want an end you have to make it yourself.

It's how he ended up with a the taste of steel on his tongue on the anniversary of Jessica's death and the night after that and the night father that, the bottom of the well in sight.

But he never could do it.

And he didn't know why until a waiting room in Mason Industries.

He's stronger than that man, the one driven mad by grief. He's stronger because of her. He's alive today because of her. No matter where they end up, he'll never let that be for nothing.

* * *

Returning to a dark home after a deployment is one of the most terrifying moments of reintegration into normal life. Shadows, masked corners, they're all made for hiding the ones who want to see your life gone in an instant.

He understands all too well why most children are afraid of the dark.

So he enters the apartment with caution, listening intently for every noise, every creek of the floor below him and ceiling above him, every car driving by outside, every dog barking, ready for a fight that his brain tells him should have been left in a country too far for ghosts to follow.

"Why didn't you call?" He has his gun drawn and pointed in less than a second, but it's target shocks more adrenaline into him than any single enemy he faced in combat over the past six months. "Whoa there, soldier." Lucy is there, on his couch, holding her hands up in surrender. "Nothing too threatening here. Just a historian." He hesitates bringing his weapon down, not knowing if this is some cruel trick his mind is playing on him, but the thought of having her in the line of fire, even from his controlled hand, finds his gun tucked away in its holster just as quick as he had drawn it.

"I think you underestimate your ability to intimidate, professor," he throws back, not taking a single step. "You nearly scared the shit outta me. A soldier fresh off deployment is about as likely to blow up at the slightest pressure as land mine." He sees a flash of guilt strike her face, but she quickly shakes it off, squaring her shoulders a little more.

"Why didn't you call?" She asks again, a little more firmly this time. "Six months without a word. Why?" Now that he can fully register her question without the immediate threat of intrusion pouncing onto his nerves, he feels her words cut at his already anxious heart.

"I didn't think you wanted me to," he admits with a breath caught in his lungs, carefully waiting for her response. She just sighs, adjusting her position of his couch, wiping at her arms like his words are a blanket on her and it's just too warm.

"I didn't think I wanted you too either," she confesses, not meeting his eyes. "But then I… I don't even know when it started but one day I had one of my students ask why I was checking my phone so often. It just never occurred to me until then that I was, but she was right. I must have been checking it every fifteen minutes, and that was when I was in the middle of teaching. If I was anywhere else it was every five minutes. For six months I slept with the ringer on full volume and right beside me where I would wake up to it regardless of the hour. I could never sit still when I was home alone. I'm honestly surprised there's any carpet left in my apartment at all. You were always on my mind. Hell, Wyatt, I tried going on dates, but I just… I couldn't do it. And then a few weeks ago there was just this moment where…" she takes a deep breath and then just sits back into herself, vaguely gesturing around her. "So here I am."

Of every scenario Wyatt imagined coming home to, he never dreamed this would be it, but her words shock him, sending lightning through his nerves and straight to his brain, short-circuiting any response he had locked and loaded, so he fires blind.

"How'd you get in?"

Lucy looks a little shocked that that's his response to her roundabout confession, but after a moment she offers a shy smile and pulls something from her back pocket, holding it up for him to see.

A paper clip, bent out of shape.

"You… picked my lock… with a paperclip?" He asks incredulously, and she just shrugs.

"Learned from the best." It's one of those moments where the breath rushes from his lungs, but instead of being voluntary, it feels like her words just reach in and steal it, leaving him gasping. He never thought a paper clip would elicit such a response, but it's her and it's here and she picked his lock just to be waiting when he comes home. He's hoping like hell for this to be what he's been longing for. That she's ready for him, for _them_.

"I—I have an alarm and everything." He feels like he should forget all these questions about how she got in because she's here, teary-eyed on his couch, but it's all he has the courage to ask. If he asks her why, he's afraid of what she'll say. He's afraid it's going to be a good-bye, a last moment of trying to explain why she can't forget the pain. He couldn't live through any final good-bye with her.

There isn't a world, a timeline, a life he can live in now where Lucy Preston isn't a part of it.

"Yeah," she chuckles, pushing some hair behind her ear. "I had to have a little help with that." She sniffs to hold back the tears so desperate to flee. He wonders if she allowed herself to feel even half of the anguish he experienced during their time apart. He hates seeing her cry. He hates even more being the cause behind it. Her life had been one nightmare after another, and if she'll allow him now, he'll fight to make sure she never has to live another one again. Dreams only from now on.

"But when Jiya cracked it, I realized I should have known it all along." She looks into her lap, a smile forcing its way through the tears. "1-9-4-1, Wyatt? Hollywood? I figured it would always be a little too bittersweet for us." He's having flashbacks to the night on the porch, wondering if he moves towards her, if the bubble will burst and she'll run, but the tears are falling a little harder now, and in no world would he leave her to cry alone.

"Lucy—" he takes a step forward, but she's beaten him to it. Her arms are around his neck, her face buried deep in the crook of his neck her tears carving into him, creating canyons in the skin, trying to convey the gaping hole their separation had left on her heart.

"Can we just…" Her voice is thick with feelings gone too long unexpressed. "Skip the words for right now? Please, Wyatt, I was so afraid I'd never see you again, that I would never get the second chance, that I would have to live with the last words I said to you not being about how much I love you, and I just…" Her body shudders against him.

"Sh, sweetheart," he whispers, only then realizing his own tears falling into her dark hair. "We can skip all the words for now. I promise. No more running. No more regrets. I'm home. I'm here. What I told you all those nights ago is still as true today as it was then. I love you so damn much, Lucy Preston, and if it's okay with you I'd like to never have to suffer through another day without you again." He feels her shudder against him again, but it takes a moment to realize she's laughing.

"That sounds pretty good to me," she beams, pulling back from his embrace to look him in the eyes. "I love you, Wyatt." She wipes at the tears on his cheeks, but so long as they fall due to this blissful relief at being again in one another's arms, he doesn't mind them. His heart is too full to mind much of anything other than her.

He slides his hand from behind her head to under her chin, tilting it up slowly, silently asking again if this is okay, if this is really what she wants, and this time she doesn't turn away.

In that moment of her lips against his, he wonders if he's truly been breathing since the last time they did this. Because despite the lack of oxygen he's currently taking in, his chest feels full. Like that one night in Hollywood had taken his need for air and replaced it with a need for her. It's not surprising, he's known for longer than she realizes that he cannot live without her.

In a kiss that's been put on hold for two years too long, there's no rush. It's so slow and soft that he doesn't realize he's opened his mouth up to her until her tongue is sliding across his, sending shocks of exhilaration into his core and drawing her even closer to him. He would wonder how they fit so seamlessly if he didn't already understand that they are _it._ They're not lightning strikes or whirlwind romances because those are all too fleeting, too come and go. A brilliant bright light that blinds the senses and hides what's broken. It burns. It destroys. But it's made so that you can't look away.

What this is… there isn't a comparison worthy of what he feels for her and what he desperately prays she feels in return. He can't hide anything from her. He's never wanted to. Because she heals him. She fixes him. She knows what's broken before a word can escapes his lips. She has him pieced back together before he knew there was a part of him missing. Even from the first mission, they had an understanding. They fought, they argued, but they always understood. With whispered looks, with gasping touches, and and he's never wondered when _it_ happened because he doesn't know. Part of him feels like he's always loved her, like they've loved across 1000 lifetimes back to the first sunrise when the earth was new. She's in his blood, his breath, his heart, and finally, _finally,_ in his arms. Their souls are a tangled mess now, unable to be separated. He hears it in the way her body folds into his, a silent whisper that wraps around them, binding them together.

 _Yes._

She relinquishes her hold on his mouth, sighing contentedly, her nose finding a home again in the crook of his neck, and her hands linked behind his back.

"Couldn't have told me all that six months ago?" He teases, and she just rolls her eyes.

"You're lucky you're getting them now," she laughs and it's light and carefree first the first time in so long, and it brings a powerful light from her eyes that jump starts his heart. "Now there's something I need from you that I've been deprived of for over 75 years." With a few simple words she turns the light to heat, starting a fire that knows only one way of being put out. "We have a lot of missed time to make up for."

* * *

And now we can all breathe a sigh of relief! Happy Lyatt=Happy ship. One more chapter and then an epilogue! Stay tuned and shoot me a review while you wait ;)


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